Recommendations (Jan- June 2016)- Novels

‘The Maestro saw it was a Nora Roberts romance and he smiled. There was something about the status of the Romance genre that infuriated him. It was pulp, no different to Sci-fi and Crime, but it had followed a different trajectory in the bullshit hierarchy of literary works. At some point thinkers and readers had agreed that Sci-fi and Crime were worthy works of art that, from time to time, should be taken seriously and given the same consideration as that due to literary fiction.’

The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

‘On the phone they spoke as if they were on their own; in reality they lived with their father, but, accustomed to keeping us separate even in words they spoke to me as I didn’t exist.’

No Direction Rome by Kaushik Barua

She laughed again. A man in a large woolen shawl behind her laughed as well, her laughter was as infectious as cholera in a sewer pipe. In front of us, a Bangladeshi immigrant played out some magic tricks. I had seen the guy before. He started swallowing a sword. Deeper and deeper it went.

The Girl on The Train by Paula Hawkins

His strength, that protectiveness he radiates, it doesn’t mean she’s weak. She’s strong in other ways; she makes intellectual leaps that leave him open-mouthed in admiration.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

“What does it mean to be a gentleman? How do you define it?”

“A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do but what he should do.”

Family Life by Akhil Sharma

‘There was silence. I had decided to tell Rita I loved her. This was because from having watched Hindi movies, it seemed that if one was to have a relationship with a girl, one had to be in love.’

Suicide by Édouard Levé

‘You preferred reading standing up in bookstores to reading sitting down in libraries. You wanted to discover today’s literature, not yesterday’s. The past belongs to libraries, the present to bookstores. You were however more interested in the dead than in contemporaries. More than anything else, you used to read what you called ‘the living dead’: deceased authors still in print. You trusted publishers to bring yesterday’s knowledge into actuality today. You didn’t really believe in miraculous discoveries of forgotten authors. You thought time would sort them all out and that it’s better to read authors from the past who are published today than to read today’s authors who would be forgotten tomorrow.’

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

The next day, while Lydia was curled on the window seat, phone pressed to her ear, he’d picked up the extension in the kitchen and heard only the low drone of the dial tone. Lydia has never really had friends, but their parents have never known. If their father says, “Lydia, how’s Pam doing?” Lydia says,”Oh, she’s great, she just made the pep squad,” and Nath doesn’t contradict her. He’s amazed at the stillness in her face, the way she can lie without even a raised eyebrow to give her away.